Tuesdays on Broad Street: Week 1

  A few weeks ago, I began a Community Service Learning course for college, which requires me 1) to attain 80 volunteer hours at two local NGOs or charities and 2) reflect on, record and share my experiences.

For my minor project, I am serving 20 hours at Augusta Care Pregnancy Center. Over the next few weeks, I'll be blogging about my experience and the not-always-academic things I'm learning. Through these blogs, I invite you to join on this amazing, eye-opening journey I've found myself in! These are my honest, immediate observations and reactions after each day I serve. I hope you read with a compassionate heart and are stirred to action in your own community!

Week One: Feeling the Distance

I pull into a parking space off Broad Street in downtown Augusta. The Care Pregnancy Center, an old, three story building that rests on the corner of Broad and 13th Street, is about a hundred yards away. As I walk down the sidewalk, a man in faded jeans and an old sweatshirt approaches me.  “Ma’am,” he says boldly. My heart beats nervously, though I wish it wouldn’t. I avert my eyes and don’t stop walking until he shoves out his arm. Draped across it is a black leather jacket. “Will you trade this for something to eat?” he asks quickly.

  “I’m sorry, no thank you!” I smile and rush away. 

At the corner of 13th and Broad

     An automatic bell chimes as I walk into the CPC. A young woman slouches on the couch, her hand over her small stomach. I notice her pants: a dingy pair of jeans splattered with bleach and paint. The girl nestles against a man with a shaved head, and he drops a lazy arm over her shoulder. With the couple is a boy, around eight or nine years old, and an older man with long fuzzy white hair. He balances an unlit cigarette between his fingers. 

     The boy swaggers around the lobby with childlike arrogance and shrewdly examines some baby toys in the corner. He picks up a cube made of plastic canvas and blue and white yarn. He shakes it and tiny bells ring. The little boy turns to me and says with a raspy voice, “I know, I’m seventeen, but I’m still playin’ with this stuff.” I furrow my brow, smile and say, “Sure you are!” I wonder, among other things, why he isn’t in school.

     The CPC was founded in 1981 and is currently run by director Susan Swanson. I talk with her a lot that morning, or rather listen, as she shares story after story about the women and families that have come through her doors. Ms. Susan is a short, plain woman in her sixties, and though she is perpetually exhausted, my dad said she could storm hell with a water pistol and win. As I listen to Ms. Susan, I'm inclined to believe him. 

      “You’ll see a lot when you’re down here,” Ms. Susan warns me. “Things you don’t see out in the white, middle class suburbs. People just don’t get what these women actually face on a day-to-day basis. They don’t have safe houses, cars to get to jobs, or money for their kids' daycare. Basic things that you and I don’t think twice about, they don’t have.” After a few stories, she tilts her head and looks directly into my eyes. “I’m not scaring you, am I?” she asks.  

    “Of course not!” I say, “I want to know what’s really going on in Augusta.” 

     Ms. Susan laughs. “Well you’ll definitely see that down here.”

     While we’re talking, a new client walks in the door. I don’t wish to use her real name, so I’ll call her Natalie. Natalie is nineteen years old, living in the back of a stranger’s car, and pregnant. She tells us she was raised in foster care, but she can’t remember much from that time because of overdosing too many times. 

     “What were you on?” Ms. Susan asks directly, but there's no judgement in her tone. 

     “Heroin and methamphetamines,” she says quietly. “But I’ve been sober for 126 days.” We congratulate her and I leave so that Ms. Susan can begin counseling her. 

A counseling room at the CPC

     Each new client of the CPC is required to have at least one counseling session. The counselor’s questions focus on determining woman's physical health and how far along her pregnancy is. Other questions address family dynamics such as if the father is present, if she has safe housing, and whether or not she's considering an abortion. 

     When I see Natalie again later, I can tell she’s been crying. Ms. Susan is putting her up in a hotel for now while Natalie applies for housing for mothers in crisis. She wants to keep her baby.

In this room, women read results from free pregnancy tests offered by the CPC.

      Later that day, I sit with Natalie, Ms. Susan and another girl I haven’t met. Ms. Susan introduces her as Janae (again, not her real name.) Janae is sixteen and goes to a local high school. She is a former client of the CPC and has an eleventh month old daughter. When she came to the CPC, Ms. Susan helped Janae out of a bad home situation and provided safe housing for her and her daughter.

     “Now Janae is my spy at her school,” Ms. Susan says proudly. 

     “Your spy?” I ask. 

     “Yep, she’s looking out for good girls in bad situations.”

     “There’s a lot of them,” Janae says.

     “Janae’s been telling me about these 15, 16, 17 year old girls dating men who are almost 40,” Ms. Susan says, shaking her head.

     “Yeah, there’s a girl in my class, her boyfriend is 39,” Janae adds.

      My eyes widen in shock. “Why? Why would they do that?”

     Suddenly, Natalie sits up and breaks her silence. “Because they promise you the world,” she murmurs. “I can’t say anything, my boyfriend is 34.”

     I say nothing, embarrassed by my ignorance.

     “They see a broken girl and they think they can fix you... or take advantage of you,” Natalie continues. “They promise it’s gonna be okay, that they’re gonna take care of you. And you just want something that’s safe.”

     When I get in my car to drive home, I pull out my journal and scribble the words, “My gosh, I am overwhelmed and blinking as if a blindfold was just ripped off my face. What’s really going on, right under our noses, right here in Augusta and North Augusta. I had no idea.” 

    A heartbreaking story Ms. Susan told me about a woman they'd rescued from a pimp she’d lived with for four years, rings in my ears. 

   “That happened on Hugh Street," Ms. Susan said. "That's, what, five miles from your house?" She shrugged sarcastically. "But North Augusta doesn’t have any problems! That’s what they want to you to think.” 

    That's exactly what I have thought, I write. This place is like a totally different city.

     Week 1 hasn’t given me any solutions. But it has opened my eyes to a massive social, economic, and spiritual divide that cuts right through Broad Street. I’m just starting to scratch the surface of these mammoth issues like abortion, poverty, homelessness, and racism here in Augusta. The issues seem vaster and more deeply ingrained than mountains, and I stand in front of them, neck craned and eyes squinting, with a broken pick axe. But I have hope that somehow God knows a way up.

For more info on Augusta Care Pregnancy Center, their mission, services, and opportunities, visit: www.augustacpc.org